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The actual trippie, part 4

After a solid three and a half minute’s sleep the alarm was going off to announce the arrival of 6am. Steven picked up his hand luggage and announced his readiness to leave. Ummm, pyjamas son, how about you swap them for some clothes. Adrian and myself showered and Auntie Jo came down to take our tea bags from the little supply of drinking things: neither Adrian or myself drink tea. At around 7am we are ready to leave the hotel having all purchased coffee from the machine in reception. Turned out to be the worst coffee ever but who cares when you are going to Disney World in a few hours.

The Behemoth was put into the car first with the other 3 bags on top. Hand luggage was stacked around this and the “staying in the car” bags were chucked in somewhere. Steven had got a hot chocolate from the drinks machine in the hotel and placed this in the beverage holder between the two front seats. He then climbed into the back of the car and promptly stepped on the hot chocolate spraying it all around the handbrake area of the car.

I have phoned the people looking after our car and they have told me where to go in the airport. It only took about 10 minutes to get there and as soon as we found a space the man with the appropriately logo’d jacket comes up to collect our car. One signature later and a confirmation of return date and we had over our keys and wave goodbye to the car.

Entering the terminal Mr A was charged with dragging The Behemoth up the ramps to the check-in area while the rest of us bought the smaller bags. The moving walkways to the terminal are, according to the boy, the best things he’s ever seen. Getting him to travel in the right direction on them is proving problematic and we have to threaten to make him walk on static floor before he’ll comply.

When you enter the South Terminal the Virgin Atlantic check-in area is about as far away from the entrance as you can get. We head over and are greeted by an over-smiley woman for this time of the morning who wants to know why we are asking the way to the Bag Drop desks through the 48 miles of rope and poles laid out in front of us. Ummm, we did On Line Check In and it told us we needed to go to back drop. “Oh have you done On Line Check In?” she’s says through a fixed smiley mouth. Yes we have and it’s too early in the morning for the MENSA challenge you have laid out in front of me so just point please.

A nice lady behind a desk marked BAG DROP ONLY beckons me over and I smile at smiley lady and go past her secretly hoping that Adrian runs her down with The Behemoth. The nice lady checks our check-in details and confirms that I have the seats that I say I have. Everything is in order. Please put the first bag on the weighing thing. Steven starts to climb on. We pull him back saying this is not Toy Story and only bags go on this thing. The people and toys get on the plane a much more convenient way here. Nanny Lesley’s bag weighs in at a pathetic 10kg and a bit. The two bags for our family are 10kg and 14kg respectively. The Behemoth weighs in at 18.6kg.

It’s breakfast time and anything but McDonalds is fine. It’s called MuckDonalds in our house. As McD’s has now moved beyond the security point we can choose Burger King, or anything else. We settle for Frankie and Benny’s and spend the equivalent of our first mortgage on breakfast for five.
For the record I had the bagel thing with egg, bacon and cheese in it and to be honest it was delicious. Our server was hysterical though. Clearly he thought he was better suited to something above this and flitted about like he was serving high tea at The Ritz. Eventually we’d run out of reasons to laugh at him so joined the long line to get through security.

Except it wasn’t a long line and we were through the first passport check in two minutes. The bag check and beepy archway took longer though because someone beeped. Yes, Auntie Jo set the beepy thing off and then proceeded to go redder than a red thing while having the pat down and re-check. The security staff were laughing as they had never seen anyone go so red before. Turns out it was the shoes that caused the offending beep.

First stop is WH Smith for bottles of water and chocolate milk. Then it's Duty Free where we all split up and agree to meet by the lifts in 20 minutes. I wander aimlessly as are most of the people in there and eventually give myself a spray of CK something or other which turns out to be so heady I get a headache from it. I arrive back at the meeting place and sit for a while before spotting the rest of my family waving at me from somewhere clearly not the designated meeting point. Adrian has bought Steven a tube of jelly beans which he is eating gleefully. I admire the Ferrari and wonder how it got inside the airport terminal but stop at paying £20 for a raffle ticket to win it. Check the flight status and we are on time but the later Virgin flight is delayed and refreshment vouchers are being handed out. With 45 minutes to kill we get coffee from Costa and plead with Steven to just calm down a bit. Then we are called to gate 17 so it's time for a last wee and a quick phone call from Teresa before we are through the last security point and into the boarding area.

Well who in their right mind gives a boy JELLYBEANS just before flying???! Sheesh! Don'tcha' all know about the evils of sugar? I'm sure he was just totally excited and raw liver would have made him jump around.